Title :
Nondestructive, ultra-low resistance, thermally stable contacts for use on shallow junction InP solar cells
Author :
Weizer, V.G. ; Fatemi, N.S. ; Korenyi-Both, A.L.
Author_Institution :
NASA Lewis Res. Center, Cleveland, OH, USA
Abstract :
Contact formation to InP is plagued by violent metal-semiconductor intermixing that takes place during the contact sintering process. Because of this the InP solar cell cannot be sintered after contact deposition. This results in cell contact resistances that are orders of magnitude higher than those that could be achieved if sintering could be performed in a nondestructive manner. The authors report on a truly unique contact system, involving Au and Ge, which is easily fabricated, which exhibits extremely low values of contact resistivity, and in which there is virtually no metal-semiconductor interdiffusion, even after extended sintering. they present a description of this contact system and suggest possible mechanisms to explain the observed behavior
Keywords :
III-V semiconductors; contact resistance; electrical contacts; indium compounds; materials preparation; metallisation; semiconductor-metal boundaries; sintering; solar cells; Au; Ge; InP; contact formation; contact sintering process; low contact resistivity; nondestructive contacts; shallow junction InP solar cells; thermally stable contacts; ultra-low resistance; Conductivity; Contact resistance; Degradation; Diodes; Gold; Indium phosphide; Metallization; Photovoltaic cells; Rapid thermal annealing; Thermal resistance;
Conference_Titel :
Photovoltaic Specialists Conference, 1993., Conference Record of the Twenty Third IEEE
Conference_Location :
Louisville, KY
Print_ISBN :
0-7803-1220-1
DOI :
10.1109/PVSC.1993.347123
